Breakfast with the Racing Post is one of life’s little joys, the paper spread out at the form guide, a pot of coffee, toast and marmalade, the kitchen nice and quiet with no distractions. What you’re looking for is normally the opposite of what the backing punters are looking for. Your selection needs to be the favourite, or one of the top three horses in the betting, (the lower the price the better. I have a limit of 5/1 but that’s a personal preference, what you’d call my ‘comfort zone’). You don’t want to ‘lay’ rank outsiders, even though they’ve got no chance of winning; at a price of 60/1 and your liability resting at six hundred quid for a ten pound profit, you’d have to be mental.
      After the price, the ‘going’ is the most important element in racing, so check to see if your horse likes the ground, if not, you could take it on that basis alone. The most susceptible horses will have been withdrawn by their stables if the going is not to their liking, but it’s surprising just how many horses do run on unsuitable ground. Then you check the C&D winners, has your horse won before at this course and this distance, when did it last run? If it’s having its first run for a long time then it could be a point in your favour, if it ran in the last week then maybe not, especially if it won last time out, horses get into a rhythm and like to find some racing form. Look for horses who are carrying extra weight, some punters lay these horses exclusively, some lay fillies exclusively especially in mixed sex races. Check the jockey and trainer stats. I hate laying favourites from yards that are ‘on a run’, or have the champion jockey on board.
      In a race like the Grand National, forty or more horses race over four miles, and jump thirty fences; to pick a winner in a race like that is almost impossible, to win the race is almost impossible. However, thirty nine horses are certainly going to lose, thirty nine horses are running for you, as a layer, so let’s have a good look at the form and give ourselves an edge. There’s an element of truth in the notion that you could stick a pin in the race card and lay whatever (as long as the price was right) and still win. About two thirds of favourites lose, and that’s worth bearing in mind, and if you have a well worked-out staking and recovery plan then you might end up in profit, regardless, but why not just go the extra mile and put some ticks in the right boxes. At the end of the day there are loads of variables, and numerous systems, but horses aren’t machines; they have moods, they get headaches, and they can be bloody minded, which is all good news for we layers, and why huge odds-on certainties so often fail to win.

But let me introduce you to Martin: he lost fifty quid on a different race today. He layed a horse called No Hoper, for ten pounds at a price of 5/1. But Martin has a system. He’s got a staking plan, and a recovery plan, so he’s not really bothered by these losses, every system suffers losses, you just have to be prepared for them, and he’s not happy to let fate take a hand in his gambling. Losing is just part of the daily life of a bettor.
      But how long can you sustain a losing run if you’re a layer, even with a system? Let’s look at Martin’s, which is quite conservative, but still fragile.
      Come the next morning over toast and coffee, he finds his horse, a horse that will lose in the 4.15 at Southwell, and what his system tries to do is recover loses on the next bet; that’s the fifty quid he lost, plus the ten he wanted to make initially, plus the daily stake of ten quid; so: Seventy quid in toto. If the horse loses he’s back on track.

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